Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Burman's Prodromus Florae Capensis

1992; Oxford University Press; Volume: 109; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1095-8339.1992.tb01446.x

1095-8339

D.O. Wijnands,

Plant and Fungal Species Descriptions

Burman's 33-page Cape Flora, appended to his 1768 Flora indica, is a prodromus only. The fully-fledged Flora that Burman intended to publish was never produced. Burman's format in this Prodromus is very concise. It is hardly more than a list and when descriptions are given they are rarely sufficient to identify the plant intended. Some 280 new names are published in the Prodromus, many of which have been overlooked until now. Comparison with Burman's herbarium specimens in Geneva and with Burman's manuscript sources, clarified many names, but others remain of uncertain application. The main collectors contributing to the Burman Cape herbarium are Hendrik Bernard Oldenland, Jan Hertog, Laurent Garcin and Jan Andries Auge. Oldenland (c. 1663–1697) was master-gardener of the Company's garden at Cape Town from 1691. He collected native plants, but his herbarium also contains many European plants which were grown in the garden. Oldenland's herbarium was donated in 1756 to Burman by Willem Roell. It consisted of bound volumes, but at present the sheets are loose and inserted in the Burman herbarium. Hertog (c. 1663–1722) succeeded Oldenland as master-gardener, it seems likely that his collections are in Burman's herbarium, though without identification as such. Garcin passed the Cape in 1720 and in 1729. He was a physician on board of Dutch East India Company ships and collected at ports of call from Ambon to Persia and to the Cape. Auge (1711–1805) was gardener of the Company's Garden at the Cape from 1747. He collected plants and probably sold them to Michael Grubb and to Maarten Houttuyn. He also accompanied visiting botanists such as Thunberg. The Amsterdam Hortus Botanicus received plant material from the Cape by order of the Directors of the East India Company. But as the Hortus did not wish to maintain a herbarium, the specimens came into the possession of Burman.